


Wan and Needful

by CherryIce



Category: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
Genre: F/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-04
Updated: 2004-08-04
Packaged: 2017-10-22 18:36:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherryIce/pseuds/CherryIce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Disassociation, drive, and everything in between. Tom Sawyer/Mina Harker, post-movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wan and Needful

In Madrid, he spends the last of his bullets. Smoke in the air and in his eyes, and the distant, bloody light of the conflagration that used to be the headquarters of a ring of slave traders hangs heavy over everything.

If the world is a stage, then none of the players know their lines. Everywhere is screaming, and running; uniforms calling for calm lost in the press. Firefighters push half-heartedly through the crush, remembering the sister or cousin or niece taken into the mansion and never returned.

In the confusion, he can't tell who's maniacal and who's merely manic, and he keeps his gun close to his chest, barrel to the sky, to still his twitching fingers.

He can't see the League. Can't see the miraculous rearrangement of lady's skirts that signifies Skinner's passage, Hyde's wild arms raised above the crowd to toss an unwary soldier. Can't hear Nemo's battle cry; see the flash of his sword. Can't see the blur of light and shadow that signifies Mina's presence.

Someone stumbles against him, knocking him almost to the cobblestones. He catches himself (barely, would have been trampled beneath panicked feet if he had not, ribs broken and bleeding from the nose as they pushed and shoved above him) and whips around to land a blow.

It is a girl, still pressed tight against him, with a gaunt face and bare feet, and his fist stops mere inches from her cheek as he realizes this is not one of the traders, but one of the girls who they have set free. Her eyes are broken and dark, and she has not flinched from his fist.

"Go," he says, and she stands and does not move. He thinks she was one of the ones who refused to move after he shot the lock off their (cageprisonhell) and Jekyll had to lead out by the arm. Cursing, he grabs her by the hand (gun still pointed skywards), and hauls her through the press. He wishes he had something to offer her, but all he has (is) is a gun. He does not offer her a bullet, because he does not think she would refuse.

He deposits her in the arms of a man in the uniform of the Spanish police, a man who looks at his gun and the blood on his face and starts to holler words lost in the cacophony, whose eyes widen as Tom barrels towards him. "Look after her," he hollers, mouth inches from the cop's ear, and fills his arms with the unresisting girl. Burdened as he is, the man cannot take off after Tom as he pushes his way through the press.

He still cannot see any of the others, and something low in his stomach clenches. He remembers Alan's face, the broken breaths, and he worries they (they will leave him) they are not all right.

There is a fountain, in what must have been the centre of the square. He remembers it, from when their carriage rolled past two hours ago (was it only two hours? No, not a day not a year not a decade), remembers it from long hours of surveillance in the busy marketplace. Plumes of water arc unawares through the smoke (hanging bloody in the glare) and laugh gracefully to the pool below.

He flips over ledge, and he thinks he hears his pistol crack the ancient masonry. The cold water is a relief after the heat of the crush and the heavy smoke, and the mist from above washes the blood from his skin.

The statue, in the middle, is a horse. Glistening marble, water streaming from its flared nostrils as it attempts to twist out from beneath an intricately carved saddle. Larger than life with an arched back and fire in its cold stone eyes. Tom slaps its flank (doesn't feel the pain from the contact) and vaults onto its back. The girth is too wide and his wet shoes slide against the stone and he only has one free hand, but he somehow manages to haul himself up. Kneels on the pommel, his elbows in the hollows of the flying stone mane as he sighting between the ears.

Scanning the square, he can see the others -- or at least, see where they are. The flash of Nemo's sword as he hold a line of swarthy men back from Jekyll, who hauls girls to the relative safety of an ally. The strange area where men seem to be falling down and beating themselves up for no particular reason.

And Mina. Mina with her hair wild and her eyes deadly calm (he can almost see this, he is almost close enough, but he knows it too deep not to see it from any distance) and the swirl of her coats as the men around her go down, one after another.

Mina, with a vicious twist of her lips that is not quite a smile, looking down at the man at her feet, not seeing the upraised knife and the swarthy man wielding it.

Tom has no time to scream (and he doesn't know she'd hear him if he did, she never hears him) so he sights carefully through the stream of water before him -- tries to take his time, wait for the moment but now more than ever he cannot be patient -- and puts a bullet in the man's back. One round, then the other, and when he reaches for the pouch at his side, he realizes it hangs empty and lifeless.

The man sways on his feet for a second and Mina -- who spun at the retort of the gun, she heard the shots, of course she heard the shots -- crosses her gaze with his as she turns. They stand there, and the crush slows, pulls at the boundaries of time, as their eyes meet, over the man's still upraised knife and through the edges of the curtain of water. Then the knife is falling and blood is blooming across his back only Tom can't see that anymore because Mina has her arms around her attacker and her lips parted as they sink below the crowd.

The stone is cold and his bullets are gone and this time the water won't wash the blood from his hands.

*

In Boston, he stands on the top deck with his elbows on the rails. His hands hang loosely over the drop below -- the harbour is not deep enough for the submersible, and he thinks Nemo's always had a thing for grand entrances.

So they sail into Boston Harbour, ship glittering brightly in the sun and the wind raking the hair back from his eyes, and everyone stops to stare. At (him) them.

"You don't have to do this," Mina says, and rests black-gloved hands on the rail beside him. They are neatly folded.

"I'm out of bullets," he says, and does not think how much more quickly this day would have come, had both guns been in use.

"We can acquire more."

"I made a promise," he says, and he likes to believe that her hands tighten on the railing, just a little. That she loses her cool, just a little.

"Yes," she says, and her voice is ice. "You did."

He hangs his head down for a second (only a second) and turns to rest his back and elbows against the rail instead. "Made a promise to a little girl who's waiting for me back home," he says.

"You're useful here," Mina says, still facing the bay. Small strands of her hair escape their tight coil and blow in the spray.

"Anyone can be the gun," Tom says. Shrugs. He is not so young that he does not know this. "You'll find someone in no time."

"We... we enjoy having you here," and she speaks kinder. Not soft, but no longer so cold. "We'll miss you."

His chest hurts, just for a second, before he registers the use of 'we.' "You'll get over it," he says, and his voice is distant.

He doesn't know if he ever will.

But they've reached the dock already, so it does not matter.

 

Standing on the gangplank, with his pistol slung over his back and a rucksack in hand (he didn't have one when he left, oh no, but he's accumulated so much baggage since he was gone) with the League strung out behind him in a fan, he takes a second to savour the precipice. The brine in the air and the sun and the call of seagulls, and then he has an armful of petticoats and fresh blonde hair.

Becky kisses him once, chastely, and he drops his bag and swings her in circles. She squeals in delight and laughs as he sets her down. Her face is bright and flushed and her dress is pink. She smells like sunshine.

She lets his arm remain around her tightly corseted waist, and turns to introduce her to the others. Huck, already captivated by Mina, has her hand half way to his lips. He bends at the waist and kisses it, leaving her to stare sardonically at Tom over the top of Huck's head. Her skin is pale (as always) and only her lips are flushed. She doesn't smell like sunshine (bloodchemicalsandsex) and she'd never wear pink or corsets to the lab.

Her eyes narrow slightly as she looks at Huck (with his lips still to her cool hand) and then she looks at Becky, sharply.

Tom laughs at something Becky said that he did not hear, and tucks her more tightly against him.

*

The restaurant is warm and cautiously lit. Heavy with the scents of expensive herbs and fine wines; the beeswax candles and magnolias that adorn the tables. The chairs are of leather and an aged oak that matches the tabletops, and the silverware is heavy and bright. Mina keeps checking to make sure all of Skinner's silverware is still in place. She's only had to make him put it back two or three times.

Tom's not sure who's going to pay for this little soiree, but knows it won't be him. Even if they expect him to, he wouldn't have the means. Maybe he could hold the restaurant's fine crystal hostage, he thinks as he strides back past the kitchen, drinks in hand -- in exchange for the meal and refreshments, he wouldn't show off his target practice skills to the clientele.

Except he's still out of bullets.

"Becky still not back?" he asks as he slides back into his seat. She is so aching, glaringly grateful to have him back -- she has not stopped touching him since he returned, as if she forgets he is really there. Her chair, beside his, is still vacant. The one to his left is empty as well; but Huck had to check in with his superiors, and Tom knows how long that can take. He passes Skinner and Jekyll their tumblers. Nemo still sips on his lemonade. "Where's Mina?" he asks suspiciously, achingly aware of the lack of sharp, imperative *looks* she has been sending him all night.

Jekyll sips his gin and coughs.

"Said she felt in need of a drink after all, mate," Skinner says, and swirls his scotch against the light cast by the dripping candles.

"And none of you stopped her?" Tom asks as he pushes out of his chair again.

"What would you have us do? Offer her a vein? I don't know about you lot, but I don't exactly get off on the thought, there." He raised a speculative eyebrow at Jekyll. "This bloke might, but he's far too meek to offer."

Tom's already on his way out the door.

"It's not our place to tell her that she can't eat, when we've been stuffing our faces all bloody night," Skinner says, but he doesn't think that Tom hears him.

"This can't end well," Jekyll says as he drains his drink, and Skinner clasps him on the back.

It should be easy to find her, because Mina is of the type that draws attention from those (males of the species) around her. All he should have to do is ask after her with the wait-staff and they will point the way.

He loses her trail with the valet outside. Eventually, defeated, he returns to the hotel.

 

Tired of the ship and imbued with governmental funding, Mina has booked them into a inn where the long halls are coated with thick Persian rugs and the walls are as thin as paper. Used to the gentle hum of engines and the rhythm of waves, he finds it impossible to sleep when he can hear Skinner slumbering next door; knows that Becky lies dreaming across the hall with Mina's empty room beside her.

So he stands on the fire escape, elbows resting easily on the ornate metal and flicking his lighter on and off, on and off as he looks out over the city. Lamp posts flicker in endless lines down the streets and around, the eyes of the building black of light.

Below him, there is a scuffling, and he quickly snaps his lighter shut and stays as silent as he can. Strands of his hair lift in the sea breeze and obscure his vision, but he does not raise a hand to push them away.

A single figure emerges from the shadows and steps into the light for a second, only a second. Just long enough for blue eyes to scan the area, sweeping right past him, and disappear back into the dark.

Mina.

He flips down the fire escape, landing easily on the next level, and pads down the stairs until he reaches the ground. The shadows close around him, and so does a cool hand.

"Smoking is a particularly nasty habit," comes a low, throaty growl.

He doesn’t think of the places her voice touches. "I don't smoke."

"Too young to play with fire," Mina says.

"I'm not so young."

"Skinner's rather touchy about flames these days."

He sighs, pockets the lighter. "What do you want?"

"I don't want any of this," she says.

And he follows her, because he always will.

They make their way though the shadows, through the alleys and streets and finally to the park. She has not spoken another word, and her eyes are flint.

They make their way through the trees, through the grass, and the night (already dark) goes back. Over the whisper of their feet through the grass, there are small noises. Whimpers. No pain in them (never any pain in them) but pleasure and guilt and the thrill of the forbidden, and Mina's got her hands tight around his, her cool fingers all he can feel because the night's gone dark. Except for the golden spread of Becky's hair against bark. Except for the electric flash of her petticoats. Except for the paleness of her fingers where they wind into Huck's hair as he grinds her back against the tree.

He stands there without seeing and Mina lets him, until something registers in his conscious mind and he turns away. He storms off through the night, not realizing he has had her hands around his and pulled them away until he no longer feels her cool grip and his fingers are free to form fists.

"You smelled it on them. On the dock." It is not a question. He knows she is still there. She does not answer. "You smelled it and you knew and you--"

"I suspected. I knew nothing. Not until now."

"Would you have said anything? If I hadn't followed you?"

They are back on the main roads again, beneath the flickering lamps. "I knew you'd follow," she says and looks at him with inscrutable eyes.

They are pushing through a set of double doors before he realizes they have returned to the hotel. "I left my key in my room," he says.

"It won't make a difference," she says, and pulls a wire from her hair and presses it to his palm.

The elevator is old and ornate, everywhere brass molding and mirrors. Tom thinks his eyes look curiously empty. Mina is missing in the glass. "They both have rooms," he says.

"I don't think that they could do that with you this close -- even if the walls weren't paper thin," she says. "They both just *needed.*"

"What the hell do you know about it? Know about us?" he asks as the doors slide open.

"I know that you hope he makes her happy," she says. "And I know that he won't."

*

On the ship, in his (the) room, he sits on his (the) bed. Kicks off his boots and sprawls back across the worn wool blankets. Nemo has better blankets, better sheets, and has already had these replaced several times, but Tom finds comfort in the tatty fabric.

There is nothing like a knock at his door, just a sudden breeze and a sliver of light.

"He won't make her happy," Tom says, finally. His arms are crossed behind his head, and he stares up at the ceiling.

"No," Mina says. "He won't."

"It was just because I wasn't there, and they both needed someone."

Her silence is answer enough.

"They just. Needed. They just needed." He knows what it's like to need. When it's paralyzing.

He needs. And he needs. And he's almost grateful that he can't move because it prevents him from doing something he'll regret.

"I should be able to forgive them."

"You will," she says, and there is not an iota of doubt in her voice. "Give it time."

He wishes he were as sure as she. "I didn't handle that very well, did I?"

"Quite the contrary. I probably would have ripped both their throats out."

He laughs, though it's not a joke. Because it's not a joke. "I should have stayed."

"You can always go back," she says, after a long silence.

Tom lies on his lack and stares up at the reflection of the ocean dancing of the roof through his single window. The hum of the engines is calming, and it takes the bite off his thoughts.

"No," he says finally. "You can never go back. I think I knew that after I left the first time. I just let myself forget."

He can feel her nod in the silvered dark. Can feel that when she turns to leave, she casts a long look back over her shoulder at him.

When she's gone, he lies there, on the (his) bed. Stares at the ceiling and listens to the familiar hum of the engines, and decides the bed is *his.* He swings his legs to the floor and sits with his head in his hand. He realizes with a laugh that he never did get bullets.

A gun without bullets. Useless. Just like him. He looks into the mirror and laughs again. There is something in his face that scares him, so he laughs some more. He staggers over to it and examines his face closely in the almost-black; laughing at the wrinkles the too-wide rictus of a grin has forced his forehead into.

His hand smacks into -- something, something on the table that shouldn't be there, and it refuses to move. In confusion, he picks it up and examines it closely (in the near-dark). Shakes it once or twice, like he is five years old again and it is a Christmas present from beneath the tree.

And it is like the Christmas he was five again, when Santa brought him a pellet gun and a small bag of shot, because the box is full of bullets.

And he is no longer so useless, after all.

*

On the ship, there is no natural night or day, no passage of the sun and moon. Nemo, however, has his crew raise and lower the lights with the setting of the sun.

As they are never in one place for more than a day or two at a time (--and when they are they are not on the ship they are not sleeping they are otherwise occupied--) this has resulted in an elastic life where nights shrink and grow and are nothing more than days with the lights slightly shadowed.

Skinner doesn't seem to mind, because it's not girls or fun so he doesn't much notice. He seems to find the day hours comforting, though -- in the dark, he can no more see others than they can see him. Nemo -- Nemo is stalwart and cares for nothing but his mission. He likely would not bother with such trivial things as night and day and food and air if it were not for his crew.

Jekyll's medical supply of chloral hydrate wanes a little each night.

Tom, used to fresh air and always up at the crow of the cock each dawn, finds he cannot sleep. It makes him uneasy -- not knowing when morning will come, what will signify (not the encroaching light of the sun, oh no) the slight raise in the lights outside his door.

He doesn't know if it bothered Alan, the not knowing. If, for the last ten years, he saw his son's wan face when he closed his eyes (as Tom does not see Alan's, he sees Alan's only face when his eyes are wide shut). He doesn't know if Alan was just a night owl, if he hated the company he'd been thrown with, if he still found himself slightly seasick after all these years; but when Tom would wander the halls in the shadowed daylight, he would see Alan sitting by himself, chin resting on steepled fingers as he pored over map after manuscript after coded message.

Tom never quite got the courage to wander in and drop down across the table from him in one of Nemo's padded leather chairs, ask him why he was still awake. Alan never took well to personal questions, and there are so many things Tom thinks he should have known about the man who gave his life for him.

Tom wanders the halls in soft feet, for as deeply as the others (who remain) now slumber, he knows that Mina will be awake. He doesn't know if she ever sleeps.

Sometimes, when he pads past her door in the hall, he will see nothing but a tiny slit of yellow light and the back and forth, back and forth of her feet. Utterly controlled, utterly poised (as she always is) the staccato pattering comes in an even rhythm, and he wonders if he imagines it sounds like a jaguar pacing its cage.

Other nights, she leaves her door propped open, and the warm yellow light spills across the carpet and the wall opposite, creating the only bright spot along the grey length of the hall. She will be sitting at her desk, peering through a microscope or holding beakers of brightly coloured and clear liquids to the light to check reactions; or she will be sitting with her knees drawn up on the chaise lounge, book in hand. If her finger skims the page as she reads, it is a medical or scientific text, and if she mouths the words she has a novel hidden behind the tome.

He stands at the door and watches her, and as long as he is not obvious or overlong about it, she will pretend she does not hear the blood rushing through his veins. Once (only once, right after Dorian and after Alan) he found her staring out her porthole at the blackness of the ocean rushing by outside. It is the first (and only) time he thinks his presence caught her by surprise.

And then he will come in (and not look at the neatly made bed he is not sure has ever been used); and she will look up at him and then return to her work. Sometimes, he will help her wordless with her experiments, or pick up the extra text (there is only ever one) that she will (just happen to) have lying around.

"Any luck yet?" he asks her, tonight, after he was stood and watched for as long as he thinks she will permit.

She shakes her head as he leans against her doorframe, arms crossed. "Not yet," she says. "I've got it narrowed down to somewhere along the east-Asian seaboard, but I'm going to a bit more time before I can further identify the trace elements."

"The ones in the poison in the wine and the fabric fibres matched?"

She inclines her head. "The make of the fabric and the trace elements of the poison have overlapping circles of probability. Even more, Skinner's contacts traced the blade as far as east China."

"It's not possible that this guy just went on a shopping spree?" Tom asks, uncrossing his arms and dropping backwards beside her on the bench. "Poison, knives, a couple of ties?"

"Oh, it's possible," Mina says with a lazy curl of the lips. "But even if they did, they were still there, and that gives us a place to start."

"We know at least four other places this guy was," Tom points out. Leans back against the table as she swirls something clear in a vial.

"Yes, but in each of those he was absconding," Mina says. Labels the test tube with neat letters and props it in a stand containing five identical tubes. "On his home turf, he'll be less cautious." She pulls off her glasses and rubs her eyes.

"What makes you think it's his home turf?" Tom asks, dropping a hand to her shoulder and giving it a rub. "That this guy didn't just have a job there we haven't found out about yet, and nicked the stuff on his way out?"

"Assassins, when they do take souvenirs, usually take a part of or a personal item belonging to their victim," she says. He can feel her shoulders loosening under his hands. He does not think of how his palms seem to be burning against her cool skin.

"They like something personal as a memento," she continues. "And they like things that they can trust for everything else. Things that they know," she says as he squeezes her neck gently. Tendrils of her harshly pinned hair fall soft against his hand.

"I'm not the only one who finds the thought of an assassin taking something personal from their victim creepy, right?" he asks. Lets his hand rest still against her neck.

"They just need," she says. Forehead still resting on her hands, and she doesn't move when his hand trail around her neck, his thumb trails along her jaw line. "It's human to need."

His hand sneaks around and tips her head up. Her eyes are made of melted glacier water. "And you're not human?" he asks as he leans in close enough to feel her breath on his cheek. He wonders if she still needs to breath.

"Not any more," she says, and does not move towards or away.

"You're more human than whoever is doing this," he says, and kisses her, soft. Behind his eyelids he sees the face of the last victim, surprised and disbelieving against his opulent sheets.

"And you're young," she says, and he does not know when he stopped kissing her.

"How young can I be when Alan died for me?" he asks, breath harsh in his ears; and he kisses her again. It is hard and brutal and deep this time, and he doesn't know where he begins and ends, or when her lips leave his.

"What I need," Mina says, and leans in until her mouth is so close to his ear that her lips brush his skin when she speaks. "You can't give me."

And she sits back, and prepares another sample at the table with hands that do not shake.

He stands without a word, and watches her slanted hand blossom across the page. She does not acknowledge his presence. Slowly, carefully, he places an arm to either side of her. The wood of the table is polished and cold, and she continues to work. Her lips are flushed. He turns his head until his mouth, his words, his breath, brush against throat.

"I can't give, or you can't ask?" and he leaves her there.

It is only when he is out in the hall (cool, recycled air that burns after the touch of her) that he raises his finger to his mouth, touches his fingers to his lips. They come away wet.

She has bitten nearly through his lower lip.

And in the dark (silvered half-light of the ship's night), he thinks he smiles.


End file.
